Exodus - Lesson 19

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-19 
First Commandment 
Lesson Transcript

So we've taken a macro look at how many commands are there, what is the nature of these commands, who are they for, now we're going to zoom in and talk about the particulars of the Ten Commandments. Sometimes we have the most trouble with some of the most familiar passages of the Bible because we think we already know what they say. And so by slowing down and reading these commands carefully, I'm hoping that you'll see ways that maybe you've missed the richness that's there.

I already mentioned the importance of verse 2, and we need to drill it home again. These words are given in context of God's self-declaration, and by the way, he's talking to all the people here. This is not mediated through Moses.

Moses, the last we have seen Moses is in verse 25 of chapter 19. Moses went down to the people and told them to prepare themselves for the word of God. And the next thing we get is God speaking.

So the implication is that Yahweh himself spoke in the hearing of the people these words. And he begins with, I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slaves, or out of the land of slavery. We don't take this verse seriously enough.

So often when we talk about the Ten Commandments, we chop this one right out of the list, but it's a really important framing, not only because it tells us why Yahweh has the authority to give these laws and to make these declarations, because he is the one who rescued them, but also this context of rescue from slavery is a really important preamble or grounding for the Ten Commandments, because it indicates to us the spirit in which we should read the rest. God has not brought his people out of slavery in order to re-enslave them. They've gone from serving Pharaoh to serving Yahweh, but he is an entirely different kind of master.

And the kind of relationship he wants to have with them, and the kind of society he wants them to have, is one that's characterized by freedom, not coercion. And so we've already seen the people sign on willingly, everything Yahweh has said we will do in chapter 19, and we'll see it again in 24. Nobody is forcing obedience here.

This covenant is entered into willingly by the people who God rescued. I mentioned that I think that when we're counting the commands, verse 2 belongs with what is traditionally numbered as the next two commands. And I'm hoping to make a case for why we need to read these together, because there's textual unity that binds verses 2 through 6 together.

Before we talk about what binds them, just a note about the the worldview or the cosmology that is reflected here. They're not supposed to make themselves a statue of any figure that is in the heavens above, or on the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. And this three-tiered universe is not usually how we think about the cosmos.

We might think about outer space, or galaxies, and then the atmospheric layer around the earth, and then on the earth. But they thought of the world in different ways. Here's an artist's rendition.

This is by an artist from the Bible Project who drew this for us. The idea of the earth as a disk of land with mountains on it, and a solid dome over top, into which is embedded the sun, moon, and stars. And so reflecting back on this language of the first command, do not make for yourself a statue of any figure that is in the heavens above, or on the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.

This flat disk of land was thought to be floating on waters, and held in place by pillars. You can see this reflected in many of the psalms. Some of the creation psalms talk about this.

Psalm 24 is one example that comes to my mind. And I'll just share it with you a moment. Psalm 24 is a celebration of God as creator.

And it says, the earth is Yahweh's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. That we can already hear domains and residents, domains and residents. The earth is the Lord and everything populating it, the world and all who live in it, which reflects what we see here in the Ten Commandments as well.

For he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters. This is typical language for biblical authors. They think of the earth as being solidified over waters.

And how do we know there's water down there? Well, because if you dig far enough, you find water. When you dig a well, you go down to those subterranean waters. And how do we know there's water up there above the solid dome? Well, because sometimes it leaks, and we get wet.

We call it rain. And so ancient people thought of the world in terms that they experienced it, and that's reflected here. These three tiers, the heavens, the earth, and the waters.

And their residents were not supposed to make images of the residents of those three tiers, because Yahweh is the one who is to be worshipped. So let's talk about why I think that we ought to be reading this passage as a unit, rather than separating it into several different commands. So we have the preamble or the declaration in that Yahweh brought them out of Egypt.

And then it says, do not have for yourself other gods before me. And I want you to notice that other gods is plural. And then we have, do not make for yourself a statue, singular, of any figure that's in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.

And then usually that's taken as a separate command, followed by more specificity. Do not bow down to them and do not serve them, because I am Yahweh your God. Notice that them is plural, so they need a plural antecedent.

And it doesn't work very well to connect those back up to the statue, which is singular. So if no idols was its own command, then it's grammatically asymmetrical. Because we have, do not make for yourself a statue and don't bow down to them, which doesn't work grammatically.

It makes more sense for the them to be referring back to the other gods. Don't have other gods, don't bow down to them or serve them. So it seems to me that those statements belong together in the same command, grammatically, and that the statue is right there in the center.

So what this results in is a kind of literary sandwich or chiasm. So we have a motive, I am Yahweh your God, and then the first prohibition, not to have any other gods. And then another prohibition that's more specific, not to make a carved image.

And then we have the mirroring prohibition, not to bow down to or serve them. And then we have the motive restated in verses 5b and 6, I am Yahweh your God. And we hear more about Yahweh.

Here's the passage again, where you can see the I am Yahweh your God that's framing it on either side. And then we get more information filling out, what does it mean to be Yahweh? Back in chapter 3, he had revealed himself, he had revealed his name to Moses. This is the name you are to call me from generation to generation.

But we noted that there's a kind of indeterminacy to the name Yahweh, that we can't fully unpack it just by knowing its etymology. But that God is saying to Moses, come and see who I am. I will be whoever I will be.

So we're watching Yahweh's work on behalf of his people, and that's how we're finding out what it means to be Yahweh. My name is Carmen. And if you really wanted to know me, it wouldn't help you very much to pull out a baby name book and look at the etymology of the name Carmen.

And you'd see, oh, it's from Spanish or Latin descent, and it means song. You couldn't conclude from that that I'm a singer, because you don't know me yet. You know where my name came from.

But to know me, you've got to hang out with me a bit. And if you hang out with me for more than 10 minutes, you'll find out I love the Old Testament, and I'm really passionate about the book of Exodus. So you know me better now from doing this course and listening to these lectures than you would by doing a word study on where the name Carmen came from.

What sort of ethnic background does it come from? Well, it's Spanish. Well, I guess she's Spanish. Nope, I'm Dutch.

My parents just liked the name Carmen. There's no relationship between my ethnicity and the language background of my name. So in a similar way, God is saying to Moses in chapter 3, call me Yahweh, and then follow me to find out what that means.

And so here he begins to unpack that a bit. El Kana, a jealous God or impassioned God who attends to the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those hating me, and acts in covenant faithfulness to thousands who love me and obey my commands. So what does it mean to be Yahweh? It means he's passionate about the loyalty of his people.

He's passionate about the relationship he has with his segala, his treasured possession. Maybe it strikes you wrong or feels funny to you to say that God is a jealous God because jealousy is not something that we aspire to be. Jealousy is negative.

We don't want to be jealous. We're not supposed to be jealous. And that's why here I've left it in its Hebrew form, El Kana.

Dan Block taught me years ago that this means God is impassioned the way a husband is impassioned for the purity of his marriage. He's impassioned over the faithfulness of his wife. If another man starts making inroads towards his wife and tries to woo her away from him, he's going to be angry.

He's going to be jealous. And that's a fully appropriate kind of jealousy. When two people have made a lifetime commitment of loyalty to each other, then anything that gets in between them or stands between their loyalty is something that you should be passionate about and that you should try to put a stop to.

And that's the kind of God Yahweh is. He's a God who says, I will be your God and you will be my people. And that covenant of loyalty is one that God is passionate about protecting.

That's why he says don't have other gods, don't worship other gods, because this relationship is permanent and primary. He's so impassioned about this that he's paying attention to the iniquities of the fathers upon even the third and the fourth generation. It's worth slowing down here to just make a comment because a lot of people are troubled by this part of the verse.

It sounds here like God is punishing children for the things that their parents did. The way I understand this verse, the best way I can make sense of it, is if we think of ourselves in an ancient Israelite context in which they don't focus on the nuclear family, but rather clans or larger extended families live together in one household, then you would have three or four generations living together. So you have great-grandpa and grandma and grandparents and grandchildren all living under one roof.

And if the head of household is unfaithful to God and worships another god, that decision to go outside of the covenant with Yahweh will have an impact on everyone who lives in his household. The iniquities of the father are going to affect the children, even to the third and fourth generation, which actually limits the effect to those who are alive at the same time, to those who live together in the same community. In contrast, God's covenant faithfulness lasts for thousands of generations or extends to thousands of people.

There's an unbounded quality to God's covenant faithfulness in contrast to the limits he puts on the iniquities of the father. So hopefully that's a helpful way of looking at it. What's the point of this command, this verses two through six, that I think go together as one command? The point is that exclusive loyalty to Yahweh means people are to serve only Yahweh.

In an ancient context, this is the other reason why I think it's important to read these together, not just grammatically but practically and historically. If I live in the ancient Near East and I'm going to worship another god, I can't do it without having an idol of that god to whom I can show some kind of piety, bring a sacrifice or make an offering or pour oil or whatever. And if I have an idol of another god, it's because I'm worshiping it.

It's not like people happened to have idols and didn't worship them or worshiped other gods without having a physical image of them. So idolatry and worship went hand in hand in the ancient Near East. The two can't really be separated.

And so for this practical historical reason as well as for the grammatical reason that I've already mentioned, I think that we should take these as one command. Many people point to this command in the Old Testament as the basis for the argument that there is only one God, the argument of monotheism. Only one God exists.

I think it's interesting that God does not say here that he is the only God, but rather that they are to worship only one God. So the technical term for that would be monolatry, one worship. So he is the only one who is to be worshiped.

So in a sea of options, we've got Israel has all these people around them who are claiming the existence of other gods and worshiping those other gods. God doesn't stop to say, now that one's fake and that one's fake and that one's fake and that one's fake. I'm the only real one.

He doesn't do that. Instead, he says, I am the only one you should worship. Keep your eyes on me.

So he doesn't even give these false gods the benefit of a conversation. They're not even worth talking about. The Israelites might be tempted to worship other gods for any number of reasons.

In the ancient world, people chose gods to worship or gravitated towards gods when they thought that they had power or control over the land they lived on. If they owned the land and you want to get a good crop out of the ground, then you've got to worship that god and give them whatever they want so that you can get a good crop. So whether it's crops or children or military victory or healing, people sought whichever god they heard about that would have the most power to give them what they needed and what they wanted.

And in contrast to that, Yahweh says, you don't need to look anywhere else, not for fertility, not for military victory, not for healing, not for any other possible thing you might want or need. Look to me. I'm the one who will give you everything you need.

Of course, when they were in Egypt, they saw God defeat the Egyptian gods and show that they were powerless next to him. And so certainly, I believe there's only one God, just to be clear about that. I believe there's only one God, but the Bible doesn't spend its time trying to prove that there's only one, but rather calls the people to worship only one God, saying in effect, Yahweh is the only one you need to think about, the only one you need to fear.

What are the consequences if this command is broken? What are the consequences of idolatry? In the Bible Project video on the image of God, Tim Mackey says that the temple doesn't have an image or idol of God in it, because God has already made humans as his image. This, I think, is a really fascinating thing for us to think about, because this is what sets Israel's worship and religion apart from all the other nations. No other nation in the ancient Near East is building temples without an idol in it.

And yet, when we get to the end of Exodus, and they build the tabernacle, and God says, I want to dwell among you, I want my presence to be with you, he strikingly tells them, don't put any image of me in the most holy place. And Tim Mackey points out that the reason for this is because back in Genesis 1, God already made an image of himself, humans. You and I are the image of God.

And the implication then, if we're making other images of God, is that not only are we diminishing God, but we're diminishing ourselves. Christopher Wright explains, since idolatry diminishes the glory of God, and since humans are made in the image of God, it follows that idolatry is also detrimental to the very essence of our humanity. You and I were created to represent the presence of God on earth, and to mediate that presence to all creation.

And when we stoop to the level of making things out of clay, or wood, or stone, or metal, and giving our honor to it as if it can possibly represent God, we're undercutting the very purpose that God gave humans. We are the ones who represent his presence in the world. So I hope that this has helped to reframe this command in helpful ways, in ways that have been illuminating for you.

We often just breeze on by it right, no other gods, no idols. In our own culture, you and I are probably not very much in danger of creating a statue and bowing down to it. That's not what we do in our culture.

But there are lots of other ways that we look to someone or something other than God to find what we need. And so I think that we can extend this command, and use it to help us think about where are we finding our source of significance? Where are we finding our provision? Where are we finding healing? What are we looking to outside of God? And there are all kinds of temptations, be they digital, or physical, social, relational. We look to all sorts of places to validate us, to scratch our backs, to give us the kind of jump start we need for our day, instead of looking to God and saying, who do you say that I am? And who are you? And how can I live in light of that reality? So I would encourage you as you reflect on this command, to think about what are the things in your own life that stand between you and looking to God for your provision.

There's all sorts of temptations around us to look outside of God to find what we need. But he says, he's standing here saying, I am for you, and you are my treasured possession. I want to be your God, you are my people, come to me for everything you need.

Any questions? How would you then summarize the first word, the first matter? Do not worship any other gods. Okay. Yeah, I would say that in short.

And again, in an ancient Near Eastern context, you would do that by having an idol or a statue. But in our context, we might have a social media account, we might be looking for likes or trying to get followers or trying to track book sales or whatever. There are lots of ways that we look for accolades or we try to build kingdoms outside of Yahweh.